Friday, June 12, 2009
RBS WorldPay's Customer Data Security Breach Litigation Transfer Order
RBS WorldPay's Customer Data Security Breach Litigation Transfer Order
Transferred Litigations (.pdfs) | ||||||
MDL No. 2035 -- IN RE: RBS WorldPay, Inc., Customer Data Security Breach Litigation | ||||||
Canada's 3 Largest Get Together for Mobile Payments
Canada’s three largest operators getting together for mobile paymentsBy Stefan Constantinescu on Friday, June 12th, 2009
Canada’s three main operators: Bell, Rogers (NYSE: RCI) and Telus (NYSE: TU), are joing forces to launch a mobile payment system called Zoompass.
It’s supposed to be launching on June 15th and will allow customers to send, receive and request money, with a $0.50 fee to send money and transfer funds from your Zoompass account to your bank account. Zoompass is built on EnStream software and that’s just about all the information we have.
The website is blank. Transactions from mobile devices are supposed to reach $1.6 billion this year according to ABI Research,
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Banks Lose $200M Credit Card Case
MONTREAL–Several financial institutions were ordered yesterday to pay more than $200 million to Quebec credit-card holders after a court ruled they broke consumer-protection laws.Superior Court judge Clément Gascon found that nine banks and financial cooperative Desjardins unjustly charged clients during the conversion process of foreign currencies for credit-card transactions made abroad. The judgment says the charges cannot be billed to consumers before a 21-day grace period.
A class-action suit took aim at institutions that offered Visa, MasterCard or American Express cards between 2001 and 2007. Gascon's ruling ordered each company to pay different sums.
The decision comes a month after federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled new rules for credit-card issuers requiring clearer information and a minimum 21-day interest-free period on new purchases made with plastic.
The Canadian Press
Charlie Forte Starting New Payments Initiative
I found this story interesting because HomeATM offers payment processing, real-time money transfers, TRUE PIN Debit for the Web, Two Factor Authentication for online banking and thus bill payment. Eula Adams, former COO of Pay By Touch used to be the CEO of Western Union. Wonder if he's involved...he's in Denver. Either way, Charlie, give us a call, let discuss synergies! Ex-CEO of First Data Corp., makes a power play in Denver - The Denver Post
Charlie Fote, (left) the executive who moved First Data Corp. from Atlanta to metro Denver, is jumping back into the electronic-payments business.
Fote has kept a low profile since November 2005, when he stepped down as chief executive and chairman of the country's largest processor of credit- and debit-card transactions.
The Connecticut transplant helped his son launch a corn and soybean farm in Nebraska, ranched up in Boulder, spent time with his eight grandkids, rode his Harley and golfed with friends. But the hard-charging executive, known for his 6:30 a.m. daily staff meetings, realized he wasn't ready to hang it all up at age 60.
"I was getting bored," he admits.
Fote also saw a confluence of willing investors, eager sellers of payment and transfer companies and unemployed talent in the area.
Over the past eight months, Fote has crafted plans for a new holding company, which will be based in the south metro area.
Using his own money and funds from two or three private equity firms, Fote plans to acquire companies, the first by September, in the electronic-payments and money-transfer business. "It will look like Western Union and First Data put together," Fote said.
Shortly after Fote left First Data, the company's board of directors voted to spin off Western Union into a separate company.
If integrating the two companies was his vision for the future, it wasn't going to be realized. "It will be easier this time to build it the way we want to build it," Fote said. "We have no baggage. We are starting fresh."
Fote said the new company, which doesn't yet have a name, will emphasize what consumers want rather than focusing on technology or payment processing, which is increasingly becoming a commodity business.
One example: Merchants in the new system can offer customers the ability to decide at the register what currency they want to pay with. The conversion will happen at the point of sale.
Nobody is offering an integrated system that can process payments and handle money transfers and bill payment, said Gwenn Bezard, research director of Aite Group, a financial research and advisory firm in Boston.
"It makes a lot of sense as a concept to bring to market something that is integrated," Bezard said. "The concern I have is that merchants already have access to those products." The success of his venture will depend on the willingness of merchants to purchase an integrated package rather than a la carte, Fote said.
Fote is confident he can repeat the success of First Data, which went from $11 million to $11 billion in sales in the three decades he worked there. "You have to have growth," Fote said. "You need a success story."
PayPal Prez: "Great Progress" on Bill Me Later Integration
SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- The head of eBay Inc.'s (EBAY) PayPal unit said Tuesday that the online payments group was making "great progress" integrating recently acquired Bill Me Later, which enables online retailers to offer shoppers credit.PayPal President Scott Thompson said the first phase of the BML integration will be rolled out this summer, with the second phase due to be implemented by the first quarter of next year. He noted that PayPal's margins would take a slight hit over the next two years as a result of the integration, but margins would return to historical norms afterward.
Thompson made his comments at the Credit Suisse Global Media and Communications Convergence Conference, which was Webcast.
The San Jose, Calif., company last year bought Bill Me Later, saying it was a "perfect complement" to PayPal and would increase eBay's exposure to larger online merchants. BML's proprietary underwriting system tells shoppers within seconds if they're approved for credit, without detailed application forms.
Continue Reading at NASDAQ
Global Payments Buys Remainder of HSBC Merchant Services
June 12 - HomeATM PIN Payments Blog: According to reports trickling from the news wires, Global Payments Inc has agreed to buy the remaining (49%) stake in its British joint venture with HSBC Bank Plc for $307.7 million in cash..Global Payments, which processes online credit card transactions, said it expects the deal to add to its fiscal 2010 results.
It was just a year ago, (June last year) that Global Payments bought a 51 percent stake of HSBC's merchant services division. They paid $439 million for the majority stake in the joint venture to expand and provide payment processing services to merchants in Britain. So either they paid too much for 51%, ($8.6 million per percentage point) or got a helluva deal on the 49% ($6.3 million per percentage point) (or 2% of the HSBS Merchant Services was worth $131.3 million by itself)
Atlanta-based Global Payments said it used existing cash and lines of credit to complete the deal. Shares of Global Payments closed at $37.45 Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.Here are some additional facts according to the London Bureau of the Wall Street Journal:
- The HMS joint venture was created in June 2008 when HSBC sold a 51% stake to Global Payments Inc., a processor of electronic transactions.
- HSBC and Global Payments also have sale-and-referral agreements in the U.S. and Canada along with a joint venture in Asia covering 11 countries and territories.
- A new 10 year marketing alliance agreement has also been signed, under which HSBC will continue to refer its U.K. customers to HMS.
- No staff will be affected by the change of ownership and HMS will continue to be based in Leicester.
Ganging Up on PCI?
NRF and Other Retail Groups Gang Up On PCI, Demand More Reasonable Rules
Written by Evan Schuman
Representatives of seven of the largest retailer organizations sent a strongly-worded letter to the PCI Council on Tuesday (June 9), asking officially for several major changes to PCI to make compliance an easier goal. The PCI council issued a response, which pretty much amounted to “we like feedback. Have a nice day.”
The letter to the council supported an end-to-end-encryption standard, sought more input from retailers at an earlier stage, asked for larger chains to be given more time to implement new PCI requirements, wanted there to be a list of the most important elements that really need to be done (rather than insisting on compliance with every one of the “more than two hundred detailed requirements of the PCI DSS”) and called for allowing retailers to store fewer pieces of sensitive data.
The letter was written to Bob Russo, general manager of the PCI Security Standards Council, and was signed by National Retail Federation CIO Dave Hogan, National Restaurant Association CEO Dawn Sweeney, Merchant Advisory Group CEO Dodd Roberts, American Hotel & Lodging Association CEO Joe McInerney, International Franchise Association CEO Matthew Shay, National Council of Chain Restaurants President Jack Whipple and the Association for Convenience & Petroleum Retailing CEO Henry Ogden Armour. The letter was cc’ed to American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault, Discover Financial Services CEO David Nelms, Visa CEO Joseph Saunders, MasterCard CEO Robert Selander and JCB CEO Tamio Takakura.
Continue Reading at StorefrontBacktalk.com
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Massive Security Mandates for ATM Deployers in Canada
ATMIA: ATM deployers in Canada buckle down for massive security mandatesTracy Kitten editor | ATMmarketplace.com
TORONTO — Despite the economy, independent ATM deployers in Canada made the investment this week to attend the ATM Industry Association's annual Canadian show. Attendance numbers for the regional conference hit a three-year high, organizers say — up an estimated 20 percent to 25 percent from 2007 and highlighted by a number of first-time attendees. Attendance topped out at 135, rivaling the conference's best-attended event in 2005, when nearly 200 attendees made their way to the show.
Perhaps Canada's push for upcoming anti-money-laundering regulation and looming deadlines for EMV compliance spurred interest among IADs, which now more than ever are looking to industry associations such as ATMIA to lend a hand and a voice.
The conference theme, "Turning Challenges into Business Opportunities," could not be more fitting, or timely, says Gary Ferris, an independent financial services consultant and the show's emcee. IADs in particular are being called to change the way they view and do business, he said.From a security perspective, Interac, which recently announced plans to become a private, for-profit entity, is pushing IADs against the wall, say independent operators Clifford Richstone and Chris Chandler. Interac, as Canada's primary ATM and POS network, has a stronghold on the market. And mandates passed down by Interac must be complied with.
Having a single network has its benefits and drawbacks, industry insiders agree.
From an EMV and compliance perspective, a single point of contact has been advantageous, says Wendy Macpherson of Interac. The country's ongoing conversion from the magnetic strip to chip and PIN has been relatively painless, because Interac has been able to set deadlines, guidelines and mandates without the need for a lot of collaboration between networks, switches and processors — collaboration that will be a necessity in the United States, should the U.S. ever take the EMV plunge.
In fact, the United States' diversity and complex infrastructure of networks, processors, etc., is often blamed for its resistance to EMV migration. That market complexity, experts like Macpherson argue, likely has left many U.S. FIs disillusioned about how much ATM and debit-card fraud is actually impacting them.
"With so many small FIs and networks, I think there could be more fraud in the U.S. than the banks realize," she said.
Continue Reading at ATM Marketplace
Ingenico Sells Denmark and Finland Entities to BBS
Ingenico announces the sale of SAGEM DENMARK and MANISON FINLAND to BBSIngenico announces today the sale of Sagem Denmark and Manison Finland to BBS, a leading provider of electronic ID, payment and information solutions in the Nordics. The sale is combined with the signature of a strategic partnership with BBS for the distribution of Ingenico's Telium based terminals in this region.
Following the transaction that will be in cash, BBS will hold 100% of these two entities which contributed, in 2008, in revenue of EUR 39.1 million and operating margin of EUR 4.6 million. The closing of the transaction should take place in the next 60days.
Philippe Lazare, Ingenico Chief Executive Officer, commented: "The disposal of these two companies acquired as part of the transaction of Sagem Monetel is an opportunity to withdraw from non strategic activities but also to reinforce our commercial position in Nordic countries thanks to BBS leadership in this region. This disposal also very substantially strengthens our liquidity position and thus, our strategic flexibility."
Ola Forberg, BBS Chief Executive Officer, added: "Ingenico has been a strategic partner within the area of payment terminals for several years. This acquisition is important for us to achieve our ambition of becoming the leading provider of merchant solutions in the Nordics. With this acquisition we have strengthened our co-operation with the world's leading provider of payment solutions."
About Ingenico (ING)
Throughout the world, banks and retailers rely on Ingenico for secure and expedient electronic transaction acceptance. Ingenico solutions leverage proven technology, established standards and unparalleled ergonomics to provide optimal reliability, versatility and usability. This comprehensive range of products is complemented by a global array of services and partnerships, enabling businesses in a number of vertical sectors to accept transactions anywhere their business takes them. For more information about Ingenico, please visit: www.ingenico.com.
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